Autumn and the Night

The weather has gone cold here. I’m on the patio chair, wind at my back, reading my old journal that I filled out while I was lost, so graciously, on European soil. I relive my travels a million times over, catching myself on the lines about pretty girls who stole infatuation from my bones like feminine suction cups that never let go. I was so freely engrossed in becoming a new man then, learning to let go of the echoes a girl left spinning in my body – so whimsical and charming, so incredibly painful; her whispers coursed through the remembrance pockets of my intellect and pride until they dispersed from my lips in the form of spit.

The mysteries of my younger life are now vividly defined and are not as mysterious now that I’m older. Time has a habit of rendering us into observable pieces: me the watcher of a personal movie, the director forging my life into imaginable scenarios and unimaginable faults, stitching together, frame by frame, these flimsy memories of mine that are stacked like a deck of cards, poised for the gust of wind to blow them all away. Ghosts of a former life kick into transparent glints that lose themselves in the sun. The wallows and howls of broken love harden and become the rocks of experience that can be shaved into flakes meant for the string of a perpetual necklace in need of a clasp.

This autumn chill corrals me into reflection giggles that deepen into a darkness too damp if I let my mind break into the regretful shards of a man who thinks he could have done better. Optimism becomes a fickle lover: caught in between torment and laughter like a clown who has worn out his costume. Predictability has its way with me, but I fight off permanence by jumping headfirst into things I know nothing about. Life always requires a blindfold; you learn that after a time. Eyesight only gets you so far. And the beatings of your chest are more beautifully reckless when your feet plan zig zags and turnarounds to confuse the irises that always try to set you straight.

Who could ever go through life with an itinerary? Lists go unfulfilled. Maps only came into existence when people started viewing folly as error instead of chance. Life weaves you tangles meant for fingernails you do not have so you come up with alternatives, tripping over the future until you convince yourself you’re doing things justly, and coherently; then happenstance finds its way into your strut, and things come to you as they should, in waves and wind, in moonlit aspiration and long drives spent in the quiet cocoon of contemplation and seriousness. Tears salt lips – nothing more; they dry up and the mirror makes you realize that they were only temporary trails.

So the night speaks to me in a cold voice that shivers my curiosity into a stale statue. I blank out on thinking, left to the reticence like an astronaut hovering over the edge of the world. Moonlight falls into the pool next to me, and the water inundates itself with leaves and milky white reflections of the stars. A cat runs swiftly across the fence, shadowed by the light of the moon, until it disappears out of sight. A train rustles its way on the outskirts of town, blowing its horn as if the noise will remind the city that it hasn’t deemed this town a proper pit stop. I sit as melancholy shoulders me into a writing mood, urging me to symbolize this moment with paragraphs and sentences.

All the while the whiskey drums me thick, insobriety thrusting creativity from my fingers until my typing becomes a cadence. If someone paid me to write them a song, I think I would oblige, I would do it for free, because maybe then a nice voice could sing all the words my tone-deaf vocal chords want to put out to the world. And my shallow exhale- the night dragging the best of me out in a single sound – becomes a thunder-clap that lulls me into deep tiredness, into unwavering thoughtlessness that makes pillows more plush, and dreams more real.

You know…ever since I got this new job of mine I’ve not been on WordPress all that often…which is a shame. But I’m glad you were able to catch up with my writing! I’m definitely trying to post more often, so hopefully I can get back into a writing rhythm.